


The Dormouse as a Portent of Things to Come

by qwerty



Category: Merlin (BBC), Watership Down - Richard Adams
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, MERLIN AS ENACTED BY BUNNIES, Multi, fuzzy bunny violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-19
Updated: 2010-08-19
Packaged: 2017-10-11 04:09:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/108227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwerty/pseuds/qwerty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were rabbits that had dreamt of the White Blindness before it came, and the Chief Rabbit blamed them when it took his mate from him untimely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dormouse as a Portent of Things to Come

The pre-dawn darkness was still too deep to see easily through, the crisp bite of the night air not yet resolved into sweet dew on the grass. Some stupid bird had already started calling in a repetitive and unmusical fashion in the trees. All in all, it was a discomfiting time for both rabbits and their myriad enemies, which was why Thistle preferred this hour for silflay.

At any more congenial time, he knew well from bitter experience, as the son of the Chief Rabbit _and_ Captain of the Owsla, he would have been beset by importunate lower-ranked rabbits trying to make nice with offers of grooming and pointing out of cowslips and other dainties (as if he couldn't see them himself!) or overenthusiastic young bucks on their first patrol with ridiculous reports ("I saw a homba by the willow tree at the riverbend! What do we do?" "You're a rabbit, aren't you? Run!") What did they expect him to do, call together the Owsla to hunt down the fox? Like he was one of those crazed foaming dogs that would bite anything that moved, large or small.

He'd take the darkness and cold over the foolish antics of his fellow rabbits anytime. Was this not a fair exchange? Were his expectations of being able to graze in peace so unreasonable?

Thus, he was more than aggrieved when, having already been woken early by some strange half-felt shock he couldn't tell was dream or reality, the long grasses parted, and a dormouse stumbled out and spat at him in broadly accented hedgerow, "The Thousand take you! Crazy rabbits! Curse you all!" It stank of fear and smoke and singed fur - a cocktail to strike panic into the heart of any animal - and scurried away from him with a dismissive flick of its scorched tail. It was... downright bizarre.

Perhaps it had been a portent of sorts. A portent of his day to come. An ill one.

And sure enough, as the sun's first rays broke over the horizon, Meadowsweet came hopping up, in a casual, meandering way that really fooled no one because everyone could see her glance about to check where he was each time she took a few more hops in his direction. Meadowsweet was a good-natured, sensible young doe who had a certain pleasing awe of him, but one, there was no deceptive bone in her body, and two, she kept company with Larksong, and that was reason enough for Thistle to view her slow approach with weary caution.

"What is it this time?" he asked, mumbling through a mouthful of cowslips.

Meadowsweet blinked and flicked her ears uncomfortably. "Larksong - she said you should take the morningside patrol towards the beech stand later. There's something there you should see. Or maybe bring back, I'm not sure."

"She could have come to speak to me directly," he groused, except she really couldn't, and they both knew it. Meadowsweet turned away, her message passed, and shook a foot at him in slight reproach, and he turned his thoughts to reordering the Owsla patrols for the day. He'd have to assign one of the older, steadier rabbits to the highway-side patrol, one that wouldn't go into tharn at the sight of a hrududu.

When Thistle had only been a tiny kitten, he was told, there were rabbits that had dreamt of the White Blindness before it came, and though it touched their warren only lightly, Mulberry-rah blamed them when it took his mate from him untimely, and all the rabbits who had dreamt were chased from the warren, while Larksong... Old Comfrey made her eat dreadful plants like chamomile and lavender, and sighed from time to time in the dark-furred, brooding Chief Rabbit's hearing about how terrible it was, that such a young kitten should have seen her parents carried away by hounds before her eyes. And they were all very, very careful never to speak of her dreams as if they carried any weight. He wondered what she had dreamt.

***

What Larksong had dreamt, apparently, was idiocy of the very highest order. Thistle had only just crested the rise before the beech stand when he saw the snake and the other - rabbit or hare, it was hard to tell, with the big ears and gangling limbs. The snake was in open grass, poised to strike, and the rabbit-hare - all right, rabbit, by its conformation and manner, though the insanity said HARE - was just watching.

Not in the frozen paralysis of a rabbit in tharn, but with a bright-eyed, head-cocked, ears-raised, nose-twitching attitude of "Isn't this interesting," and the sight so outraged Thistle that before he'd thought, he was running down the slope and had bitten the snake's tail, making it whip around in utter shock at this indignity. While cursing the rabbit-hare's astounding stupidity, he ran around and bit the snake again, and the snake flailed in confusion for a moment longer, then decided it had had enough and headed for the trees.

"What were you thinking?" Thistle shrieked when he could trust himself to speak coherently again over the _blinding rage_.

"I'd never seen a snake outside its tank before," protested the odd-looking hlessil, who had obviously been deranged by his warrenless state.

Thistle sputtered. "Tank, what tank, you, you - what was that thing?"

The other rabbit stared at him as if he were the one deranged. "A snake."

"Right," he growled, "and what does a snake eat?"

"Rabbits," said the other rabbit, still not getting it.

"And what are you?" he bit out very slowly and clearly.

"Oh." The other rabbit sat up alertly. "I hadn't thought about it that way before. That's really -"

"Stupid," Thistle grated out in horror, unable to help himself. "How did you manage to live this long and not know these things?"

"I do know," protested the rabbit. "It just didn't sink in before because I always saw them with my mum when she carried me about on her rounds of the elil hutches. I guess I'm lucky the fox I saw earlier wasn't hungry."

"Fox," Thistle repeated, and turned on his heel, hopping back towards the warren. "Rounds of elil hutches." The hlessi really was mad like a hare. He was going to rip out Larksong's ears. "Something I needed to see," he muttered to himself. "Something. Something that should have been eaten by a snake and a fox and good riddance is more like it!"

Behind him, the other rabbit started following him, still prattling at him as if he were interested. "I'm sorry, I really didn't think. It's all been so strange. What's your name?"

Irritated, Thistle flattened his ears at the other rabbit, unwilling to look at him just yet, but unable to outright abandon such a witless fool to the Thousand. "I'm Captain Thistle of the Camelot Owsla," he growled. "What are you called?"

"Oh, I'm Merlin," said the other rabbit carelessly, and Thistle stopped in his tracks then. And the other rabbit continued right into his back. "Oof! Are you all right?"

"Your mother," said Thistle in a daze, staring directly at Merlin, suddenly uncertain if he was in fact dreaming. "Your mother named you for _elil_?"

Merlin blinked slowly at him, one ear crooked quizzically. "Well, not quite. There weren't any merlins or other raptors in the hutches, and the cat said... Are you sure you're feeling all right, Thistle?"

Thistle twitched his nose. Perhaps he wasn't the one who was dreaming. Perhaps Merlin was. "I can't take you back to the warren with me. Let's stop here for a bit," he said, more shock than gentleness softening his voice. "Tell me about the cat."

"The cat," Merlin said, eyeing Thistle with the beginnings of suspicion in his bafflingly open manner. "It's really big, bigger than a wolf, I think maybe even bigger than my mum. And it's all black. It got out from its hutch somehow and picked me up, carried me here. It told me to wait for," Merlin looked around them, at the grassy slopes and trees of Camelot Down, then shrugged. "I think it meant you."

Dream or reality? Thistle bit Merlin's ear and tugged lightly, just to check. Merlin jumped in offended surprise and kicked him off. "What was that for, you enormous bunny?" he demanded.

"Bunny?" Thistle growled, flattening his ears. "You can't," he started, then his senses all went on alert, and a moment later he realised he had noticed Larksong and Meadowsweet making their way across the field to them, and Merlin stopped to look at them too.

"You are too slow, Rah-roo," said Larksong distantly as they approached, - _Little Prince_ \- and Thistle bit down his instinctive irritation at the diminutive she'd used to annoy him when they were kittens - it didn't pay to interrupt Larksong when she was being strange, these days. "Hurry."

Neither Thistle nor Merlin had any idea what she wanted them for, but Meadowsweet beside her radiated anxiety and unhappiness with all of her normally sweet, steady being, and that was enough reason for them to follow the does back towards the warren without further fuss.

When they were almost there, they met Buckbean coming back from the highway-side patrol, and Larksong stopped their little party, then diverted them back in that direction once the other rabbit had passed.

A gleaming red hrududu screamed suddenly, as if wounded, and veered off the road, breaking the barriers at the side and plunging down the slope towards the warren. It was too late, they were in its path - Thistle thought, _this is the end_, then Merlin was looking at the onrushing hrududu the way he had looked at the snake, and there was a flash -

***

"I do not have a mean streak," insisted Merlin, and Meadowsweet piped up beside him in agreement.

"Absolutely! Well, it's really more of, a crater, isn't it," she said thoughtfully, and Merlin looked at her in despair. Thistle twitched his nose and tried not to laugh at him. It was unsporting to mock the mentally afflicted.

Larksong had no such compunctions, and hummed happily as they headed back to the warren.

**(After this comes the part where they hop off into the sunset to fuck like the bunnies they are. Eventually. You know.)**

**Author's Note:**

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_concepts_in_Watership_Down  
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapine_language
> 
> Cast list:  
> Thistle - Arthur  
> Merlin - Merlin  
> Larksong - Morgana  
> Meadowsweet - Gwen  
> Comfrey - Gaius  
> Mulberry - Uther  
> Zookeeper - Hunith  
> Panther - Dragon


End file.
